David Hammons

In the fall of 2017, the Whitney Museum announced that David Hammons would create a permanent, large-scale public work for a new park on the redeveloped Gansevoort Peninsula just to the west of the museum. Hammons, who has spent over 50 years creating works whose unprepossessing materials and occasional ephemerality place them in defiant dialogue with modern art and its institutions, was a somewhat surprising candidate for such a commission. The artist has willfully positioned himself as something of an outsider, turning down invitations for major museum retrospectives, eschewing gallery representation, and generally looking askance on the art world establishment. During the opening of the 1993 Whitney Biennial, for example, he reportedly stood across the street from the museum, paradoxically performing his refusal to participate in what became known as the “Multicultural Biennial.” In 1991 Hammons had rejected an invitation to participate in that year’s biennial as well, telling the critic Amie Wallach, “I couldn’t wait to tell ’em no,” going on to add that “their relationship with black artists has been negative since Day 1.”1.

“David Hammons: Body Prints, 1968–1979” began with the artist at work. The entrance to the exhibition at the Drawing Center was lined with photographs of Hammons, taken by Bruce W. Talamon in 1974 and 1977, at the studios in South Los Angeles where Hammons started his career. In the photographs that document his singular printmaking process, Hammons is shirtless and slicked with margarine, crouching to consider white sheets of paper before pressing one part of his body down on the paper at a precise angle, his other limbs flung wide. Once christened with a sprinkle of powdered pigment, these grease marks would reveal shockingly intricate figurative impressions, which Hammons then arranged into scenes of play, prayer, and, often, political reflection. These works, thirty-two of which were presented at the Drawing Center, are expansive and abstracted riffs on Black living that revel in their emotional ambiguity.

‘Global Fax Festival’ a new performance by David Hammons dedicated to Butch Morris in collaboration with Monday Evening Concerts and pianist Myra Melford. Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles, 10 May 2021. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Elon Schoenholz Photography © 2021. The film documents Hammons’ first-ever restaging...

David Hammons is having a moment, a New York one at that. Following the unveiling of his permanent Day’s End sculpture at the Hudson River Park near the Whitney Museum and a survey of the artist’s body prints at the Drawing Center, Hammons is now displaying thought-provoking works at Nahmad Contemporary. As part of an exhibition entitled “Basketball & Kool-Aid,” the artist developed a selection of pieces made using ragged basketballs sourced from New York’s Harlem neighborhood and Kool-aid that draw upon his personal experiences as Black man while touching on racial stereotypes, prejudices, and identities in the United States.

David Hammon’s “Day’s End,” at Hudson River Park in New York, May 13, 2021. Their artistic paths crossed like ships in the night, but at long last, two New York legends meet in “Day’s End,” an immortalizing homage by Hammons to Gordon Matta-Clark and art history. Simbarashe Cha/The New York Times.

The Whitney Museum of American Art, with the Hudson River Park Trust, has permanently installed a sprawling public art project by the seminal American artist, David Hammons. Entitled Day’s End, the massive installation is situated at the Hudson River Park along the southern edge of Gansevoort Peninsula, directly across from the Museum. Hammons is best known for his interdisciplinary practice which includes sculptural, print-based, video, and painted work that explore African-American art history.

Support Hyperallergic’s independent arts journalism. Become a member today ». Last fall, in my role of visiting art critic at a northeast college, I had so many conversations about the intricacies of process with student artists that I realized that I’m actually vested in regarding art as a form of communication and a vehicle for making meaning. The student artists demonstrated that they are well versed in the language of motivation, method, and ambition, and in using these elements of their process to both justify and explain their work. In the contemporary art scene, this feels very much like the air we breathe. Then I see an exhibition at the Drawing Center of David Hammons’s body prints made between 1968 and 1979 where method, intention, and significance are all in accord with each other. I was intrigued to see Hammons, a Black artist now in his late 70s, after learning about his magpie practice across a range of mediums, including a performance where he sold snowballs on a New York City street in 1983. He has a reputation as a self-fashioned, resolutely outsider artist who garners immense respect while never having settled on a signature style — thus clearly invested in process.

If you could live with just one work of art, what would it be?. David Hammons’ High Falutin’ (1990) from the Museum of Modern Art’s collection. In truth, any of the basketball sculptures—Hammons so brilliantly strikes a balance between humour and criticism. His work can be outrageous but it seems to speak to the African-American experience so succinctly. It would remind me of the power of economy, and that everyday objects can be made important and precious.